LEBANON COUNTY, Pa. \u2013 Pennsylvania State Police are investigating after a 63-year-old Lebanon County woman lost about $400,000 in a reported online romance scam involving someone claiming to be an up-and-coming country music star.<\/p>\n
Trooper Ethan Brownback said the woman met the person on TikTok earlier this year before their conversations moved to the messaging app Telegram.<\/p>\n
“The victim and the suspect met on TikTok, and then they focused their conversation on an app called Telegram shortly thereafter,” Brownback said.<\/p>\n
State Police say the woman eventually sent about $400,000, plus hundreds of dollars in Apple gift cards, after the person asked for money to further his music career.<\/p>\n
“It could be anywhere from a couple hundred to, in this case, I mean, we’re talking about possibly close to a half a million dollars,” Brownback said of the potential losses in romance scams.<\/p>\n
Police say there was another red flag.<\/p>\n
“In this particular case, the suspect repeatedly told the victim not to tell any family members or friends about their relationship,” Brownback said.<\/p>\n
The woman’s children eventually discovered what was happening.<\/p>\n
The investigation remains ongoing. Troopers are reviewing financial records and transactions to determine the woman’s exact losses and identify the accounts and people connected to the reported scam.<\/p>\n
Brownback says people should be cautious about sending money or financial information to someone they have only met online.<\/p>\n
“Make sure that you are never sending any money, gift cards, cryptocurrency, any type of financial information to someone that you only met online,” Brownback said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEBANON COUNTY, Pa. \u2013 Pennsylvania State Police are investigating after a 63-year-old Lebanon County woman lost about $400,000…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[32],"tags":[77352,77351,29761,93,77350,77217],"class_list":["post-285097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lebanon","tag-elderly-victim","tag-financial-loss","tag-fraud","tag-lebanon","tag-online-scam","tag-romance-scam"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117240512112506858","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}